Are you a collector? Do you collect antiques, dolls, comic books, depression glass, animal trophies, or.....you name it? Do you set your collectables up on a shelf, or do you have a display case, or a special storage unit to house them? Do you show your collection off to friends and family? Is your collection something you take pride in? Have you become informed or developed a level of expertise regarding what you collect, and can you talk about it until the cows come home? Is what is on display not just your collection, but your knowledge of it as well? Is this how you treat the Bible, the Sacred Scriputres, the living Word of the living God? Are you a fact collector, a Biblical fact collector?
You may say, "But, Morris, aren't we all? Isn't that why we study the Bible, listen to the pastor, read blogs, go to conferences, etc.?" To which I would answer, "No, not really." For the goal for us in our learning of the Scriptures ought not to be knowledge for the sake of accumulation, but knowledge for the sake of assimilation. We should want what we know about the Scriptures to become part of the fabric of our person, to be a part of who we are and what we are, not a collection of facts gathering dust in the shelf of our minds.
Many people are just like the Athenians in Acts seventeen...always in search of something new. New truth, new knowledge, instead of becoming a morsel to be looked at, chewed on, and ingested, becomes a nugget to hoard and stash away, so that hearer can go and find another new fact to add to the collection. These people are also like the ones we see in II Timothy 4:3 who accumulate teachers in a heap. As soon as they are through milking all the new nuggets of knowledge from the current one he is thrown on the heap and they are off to the next.
What is your view toward Biblical knowledge? Is it something to be accumulated or something to be assimilated? Is knowledge for the sake of knowledge what you are pursuing, or are you pursuing knowledge because you are pursuing Him? In Hosea 4:6 God says His people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, but then tells us in 6:3 to press on, to press on to know the Lord. So it wasn't religious facts that they needed, but knowledge of the Holy One, Himself. Peter tells us in II Peter 1:3 "His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence." So we really shouldn't even seek knowledge for the sake of transformation, but seek knowledge for the purpose of growing and deepening our relationship with Him, out of which our transformation occurs.
So, let us not be fact collectors, but seekers of Him who promises to reward those who diligently seek to know Him with the knowledge of Himself, which then becomes something in which we truly have a reason to boast.
